Welcome to Villages4sale!

On January 21 of 1998 I was sitting on the floor in my living room in Southeast Ocala talking with my wife, LuAnne, and my mother, Connie Radford. Back at that time the Internet seemed like a novelty to a lot of people, but I saw it beginning to transform the business of journalism and publishing. Mom was a real estate agent, and the little web page I created for her with her AOL account was doing something extraordinary — it was connecting with people all over the country who were interested in moving to central Florida.

That night, while we were brainstorming ways to bring more activity to her website, we realized that classified advertising could be much more effective on the Internet than in newsprint – it could be free (or mostly free), it could reach people around the corner and around the world. And we figured we just might be able to make a go of it, so we registered the domain Ocala4sale.com and on February 15th we opened for business as Marion County’s Internet Marketplace.

We’ve lived and breathed online classified advertising for 16 years. This year we’re launching Villages4sale.com with the aim of creating a classified marketplace that serves Lady Lake, The Villages and nearby communities. We believe classifieds ought to be free for private sellers and reasonably priced for small businesses. We believe that a local classified marketplace offers something a national classified does not — local support, local engagement, and a genuinely local experience.

If you’ve used Ocala4sale in the past, you’ll find Villages4sale very different. We’re starting with an entirely new website. Our goal is to make it easy to browse, easy to post, and effective. Since more of us use mobile devices now, we wanted something that is designed to work just as easily on an iPad or smart phone as it does on the web. I want a classified site that lets me use my smart phone to take pictures and post ads while I’m cleaning out my garage — and Villages4sale does just that.

We expect to adapt and improve as we go along. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your feedback. You can e-mail me here or call me personally at (352) 547-2181 if you have any questions. I look forward to hearing from you! My desire is to publish the best classified site in town — a place that’s fun to shop, fun to sell and a great value for our community.